Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Here's the Outrage

Here's the Outrage

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has discovered, again, that fund raising companies that work with dubious collective organizations use the donations to pay for their expenses and pass the proceeds onto the organization for whom it's collecting donor money. The story: Police charity renews lopsided deal with firm. The lead:

A foundation run by Missouri police chiefs has renewed its contract with a Texas-based fundraiser despite criticism that the fundraiser takes too big a share of charitable contributions earmarked for the foundation.

"It's the best we can get. It's the best anybody can get right now," said Sheldon Lineback, executive director of the Missouri Police Chiefs Charitable Foundation. The foundation is based in Jefferson City but works with police departments throughout Missouri.

In an interview this year, Lineback said the foundation operated a Web-based police training program, conducted statewide training conferences and offered technical assistance to police departments. Lineback also said the foundation was a clearinghouse for homeland security equipment for police departments throughout the state.

Lineback said the contract extension with United Appeal Inc. was similar to the foundation's past contracts with the telemarketing company. He said it called for the foundation to get about 20 percent of money raised for the charity by United Appeal while the company gets about 80 percent. Most of the money is raised by telephone solicitations.

Actually, 20% is pretty good; when I was working as a telemarketing fundraiser for the Missouri Deputy Sheriffs Association, its cut was 17%.

It sounds outrageous, but it's really not. These fundraising companies are businesses, and they rely on the income from donations--pre-distribution--to pay all of their expenses, including rent, salaries, expensive autodial equipment, terminals for the employees, and so on. All business expenses must come from the money raised; these companies don't have chickens in the back yard whose eggs they can sell to pay the bills.

So after all expenses are paid, the profit, if you will, goes directly to a charitable foundation of dubious merit. The Post Dispatch wouldn't complain if a business that was doing something productive was churning all its profit into charity. Also, the Post-Dispatch favors a coerced setup wherein an entity takes money from all people, keeps a chunk of it, and then redistributes the remainder to dubious good causes--that's government, and the Post-Dispatch wants more of it. But because this is a for-profit business, the Post-Dispatch is on its case.

No, let's look where we should find the outrage:

Records filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that Lineback receives a salary of about $70,000 a year. Half of that comes from his work with the foundation and the other half from his work with a related group, the Missouri Police Chiefs Association.

Other members of the foundation's board of directors include Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Chief Robert Pruett, O'Fallon Police Chief Steve Talbott, Eureka Police Chief Mike Wiegand, Cape Girardeau Police Chief Steven Strong and Columbia Police Chief Randy Boehm.

Despite the fact that the foundation's board is made up of publicly paid officials, Lineback says the foundation meetings are not open to the public.

During the past three months, Lineback has said repeatedly that he is too busy to make public minutes of any board meetings, contracts between the foundation and United Appeal or other documents requested by the Post-Dispatch.

No, the fact that a number of law enforcement officials sit on the boards serves as the red herring. This charity is not unlike any other, paid officials or not. It doesn't have any extra duty to dispense its records or minutes because it's a cop charity.

However, note that it is a charity fighting transparency, and it's a charity whose executive director makes his living by running a number of charities. So these charities take the 20% they get from telemarketing fundraisers, keep their share, and pass on the benefits to their members--not to all police, but only to members.

The telemarketing fundraiser is the tick on the leech as far as I'm concerned. I don't support telemarketing fundraising efforts, and I don't support charities that exist to perpetuate themselves and their fundraising efforts. But then again, I am a small-hearted, small-government kind of fellow who tries to maintain a consistency, no matter who might see that consistency and shout "Hobgoblin!" before running away.

(Added to Outside the Beltway's Traffic Jam.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:54 AM